Artistic Process Options

[odds]

Giving the wondrously euphoric nature of this game's atmosphere, it'd be fantastic to learn from the minds that brought it to life. If any of the artists from ACE would like to do a stage-by-stage artistic process walk-through, or even tutorials for sketching f$%*ed up creatures and environments, that'd be sick.

Given that I have a decent background of concept art and some matte painting [and I could emagine that other members here also share a similar interest], it's always enlightening to see how other go about their own development process

By the way, if anyone but Carlos answers this I don't even wanna hear it, he wins. (just kiddin <3! all the artists are badass)

[odds]

I think Zeno Clash has unique art styles, even though you got your inspiration from certain things.

I think that uniqueness permits the borrowing of ideas, concepts or visions. Uniqueness doesn't necessarily mean that it was brewed up from the void, but what makes a project more unique are the implementation of ideas and the allocation of resources to realistically pull off a project, and still be proud of its outcome. ACE Team had a much smaller budget track for this title, luckily they were able to salvage portions of a previous scrapped title, which did help. The end result of the game being so creative and euphoric in its' atmosphere, and it was successful. Even though the publishers were saying that from a marketing perspective, the players wouldn't be able to connect to the game, ACE persisted on what they wanted to release as their first title.

It's a shame that publishers are making assumptions that just because the game has an different presentation, that the players wont be able to connect to the story, characters or atmosphere. Who are they to judge that there are more players than ones that play Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. ZenoClash can put you in a somewhat uncomfortable place, but that's where the connection is made. All of the, "WTF this is strange," moments in the game are very successful connections to the players. It's just not the same type of connections we see in a traditional fantasy or modern FPS game. I feel it's more intimate than that.

A lot of the uniqueness-game is about presentation and persistence of vision, and maintaining those two by whatever it takes to get there.

/rant off

Apologies for the wall of text

-odds